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It is not $0. You have to factor in the cost of everything you give up by not upgrading. For example, the inability to run modern browsers (i.e. the cost of giving up the ability to visit modern websites). The cost of not being able to run modern software (i.e. the cost of not being able to view and edit modern file formats). The cost of not being able to use modern hardware (i.e. plugging in a solid state disk, plugging in a modern digital camcorder, or plugging in one of those Lytro cameras). The cost of electricity (old hardware is way less energy efficient).

Then there is the cost of not being able to find replacement components should something break. If you lost your CPU, what would it cost to replace it in terms of not just replacement cost, but the cost to find the part, and the cost of downtime while waiting for the part? If the motherboard blew up, could you find an exact replacement? If not, will the replacement be compatible with the rest of your hardware? Will you still be able to find drivers for it?

No. The longer I've been in this industry, the more I've become convinced that there is a significant cost to *not* upgrading and the *longer* you put off upgrades, the more expensive it will be once you eventually upgrade. It is easier, far less risky and thus far less costly to make incremental upgrades than it is to make sweeping changes every so often. You will at some point eventually have to bite the bullet and upgrade or you and your skills will become irrelevant. Might as well do it in small doses then as some large wholesale change.

4GB has been like the minimum threshold for any halfway decent computer built in the last four or five years. It is peanuts for ram. These days, 8GB or even 16GB should be considered the minimum for any new machine.

This is supposed to be a fucking tech site! A "massive amount of memory" should be a desktop machine built in some guys garage with 2TB of ram on it. The machine should be running some nightly build of an obscure, hand-compiled Linux distro with a nightly build of Firefox (ideally with a completely different rendering engine spliced in, just for bonus points). Instead we have some fuckwit who is running what seems to be a rickety old P4 bitching about a god damn three year old browser and I'm sitting here replying to somebody who thinks 4GB of ram is "massive". How fucking depressing is that?

That I even need to type this on Slashdot of all places astounds me. No wonder people consider Slashdot irrelevant. These topics shouldn't even be open for debate. You are a nerd. This is a tech site. What the fuck is there to debate? More Ram == Good. Newer Versions == Better. Always. Upgrade your fucking browser. Build a new machine. Embrace fucking change. What the hell people?

Well, according to the Seattle PI, they are accused of stealing more than $750,000 In computer equipment and other items. So no, these guys did just a little bit more than a $20 charge on some dudes card.

Even issh for that matter (still haven't figured out how to consistently copy in that app)?

I'd say RDP, the program, has some of the gestures figured out. Two finger tap = right click. Double tap= double click. The problem is how to translate things like "click, hold and drag" or "Slide the slider". A lot of that might be the protocol itself (doesn't windows have accessibility hooks so things know "this widget should behave like a scrollbar"?

I dunno. It is one of the reasons flash is not supported—those were designed for a mouse. A touch interface is a whole new ballgame that is uncharted water. There is no mouse, but there are perhaps ten fingers that can control an interface.

I think the game makers will be the ones to figure out how to exploit the possibilities. I have tons of games that would never work with a mouse.

How are most of these cheesy CSI-type programs created? I would assume they are done in flash. Are they usually interactive, in other words if the actor presses a button it does some predefined animation, or is the whole thing one long animation that the actor needs to time against?

In playing with IPv6 at home, the the biggest problem has been firewalling. Vista and windows 7 assume you are either on a public IP (aka in a coffee shop) or some kind of NAT'd or external fire walled environment (aka on a slightly more trusted IP).

At home, my little LAN is fully trusted. I like to keep all my gear open, full sharing, no passwords. Anything more is a hassle.

The problem is, with IPv6 you open your LAN to the outside world. That is okay *if* you have a firewall on your router. My router (d-link DIR-825) doesnt support firewalls for IPv6. neither does OpenWRT, which can run on that box too.

Until they make low-cost consumer routers that support comprehensive IPv6 firewalling, I can't really justify running IPv6 at home.

If you are doing mainly drawing, and not GUI (ie traditonal GUI widgets on a traditional window with with traditional GUI events) you might want to look into XNA. It is basically a managed version of DirectX. Because it is.NET you can hook into winforms and WPF to create the occasional "traditonal" GUI.

Otherwise, if it is a windows app, there is no better choice than WPF. It is intimidating at first because with WPF you can easily reskin just about any uielement (and create UIelements from any class you create). But once you realize how classes and the actual UI are separate concerns that are joined only through very sophisticated data binding, you will be in love.

Complicated little beast though and if you come from a winforms background be prepared to do some major unlearning as how you bind data and events to the GUI is conceptually different. If you simply bind to "Button_OnClick" like you did in winforms you are doing it wrong. If you find yourself writing this.textbox1.text = myData.price in your code you are doing it very, very wring.